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The best: "Army of Darkness" (1993)
By the time Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” trilogy reached its third film, “Army of Darkness,” the series had evolved from its grisly-horror-movie-with-doses-of-humor origins to outright goofiness. So while “Army” has its share of bloody and horrific moments, it targets more laughs than scares. That genre shift is embodied by the mock-dashing performance of B-movie veteran Bruce Campbell as wisecracking hero Ash.
He’s magically transported to the medieval era to battle an army of irate stop-motion skeletons and retrieve the Book of the Dead, which leads to “Three Stooges”-esque slapstick scuffles with his undead enemies and mangled recitations of dead-language spells. There’s no choice but to give in to Raimi’s audacious collision of ghoulish special effects and “Looney Tunes”-style comic anarchy.
